Jaime Jaime Royal “Robbie” Robertson OC (July 5, 1943 – August 9, 2023) was a Canadian musician. He is best known for his work as lead guitarist for Bob Dylan in the mid-late 1960s and early-mid 1970s, as guitarist and songwriter with the Band from their inception until 1978, and for his career as a solo recording artist. With Robertson’s death in 2023, Garth Hudson is the last surviving original member of the Band.
Robertson’s work with the Band was instrumental in creating the Americana music genre. Robertson was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame as a member of the Band, and was inducted to Canada’s Walk of Fame, both with the Band and on his own.
He is ranked 59th in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 100 greatest guitarists. As a songwriter, Robertson is credited for writing “The Weight”, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”, and “Up on Cripple Creek” with the Band, and had solo hits with “Broken Arrow” and “Somewhere Down the Crazy River”, and many others. He was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Songwriters.
As a film soundtrack producer and composer, Robertson is known for his collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, which began with the rockumentary film The Last Waltz (1978), and continued through a number of dramatic films, including Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), Casino (1995), The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), The Irishman (2019), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). He worked on many other soundtracks for film and television. (wikipedia)
And here´s his 2nd solo-album:
Robbie Robertson’s 1987 solo debut was an ambitious but only intermittently successful attempt to chart a new musical direction for himself 11 years after the Band had publicly called it quits. Four years later, Robertson’s second solo set, Storyville, found him in much more familiar musical territory, as he steeped himself in both the music and the lore of New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz and home to many of the R&B masters who had been a primal influence on Robertson and the other members of the Band. Anyone hoping for a blowing session with Robbie Robertson leading a team of the Big Easy’s finest through the Huey “Piano” Smith and Professor Longhair songbooks will have to keep on dreaming; noted perfectionist Robertson polished these sessions to a high gloss (with the help of co-producers Stephen Hague and Gary Gersh), and the funk and good humor of Crescent City R&B generally takes a back burner to more sophisticated lyrical conceits (moody character-based narratives and meditations on the hard edges of love dominate) and gracefully moody musical structures not entirely unlike the sophisticated melodies of his first album.
But the material on Storyville does have a lighter step and a freer swing than the songs on Robertson’s debut, and his vocals are in far better shape this time out, boasting a lot more body and nuance than the sometimes fragile rasp that dominated his first time at bat. And Robertson had the good sense to bring Art Neville, his brother Aaron, Ziggyboo Modeleste, and Chief Bo Dollis on board; if the New Orleans presence in these songs is more often felt than heard, it still snakes powerfully through the music and honors the spirits that helped influence this music. If Robbie Robertson was about taking his music to a new and different place, Storyville found him taking his music back home and still finding new room to move within it, and if it’s a more subtle album, in many ways it’s also more satisfying. (by Mark Deming)
Personnel:
Alejandro “Alex” Acuna (percussion)
Ginger Baker (percussion)
Robert Bell (bass)
Warren Bell (saxophone)
Carl Blouin (saxophone)
Joseph “Monk” Boudreaux (violin)
Paul Buchanan (guitar, background vocals)
Amadee Castenell (saxophone)
Leon “Ndugu” Chancler (percussion)
Stacey Cole (trumpet)
Tony Dagradi (saxophone)
Bill Dillon (guitar, mandolin)
Bo Dollis (vocals)
Ronnie Foster (organ)
Brian Graber (trumpet)
Stephen Hague (keyboards)
Dan Higgins (saxophone, flute)
Bruce Hornsby (keyboards, background vocals)
Garth Hudson (keyboards)
Mark Isham (trumpet, flute)
Ronald Jones (bass)
Fred Kemp (saxophone)
Ken Kugler (tuba)
Mark Leonard (bass)
Jared Levine (percussion)
Jerry Marotta (drums)
John Mitchell (clarinet)
Richard “Blue” Mitchell (saxophone)
Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste (drums)
Paul Moore (keyboards)
Arthur Neville (organ, background vocals)
Cyril Neville (percussion)
Ivan Neville (keyboards, background vocals)
Leo Nocentelli (guitar)
Martin Page (keyboards, background vocals)
Charles Pollard (keyboards)
George Porter (bass, background vocals)
Guy Pratt (bass)
David Ricketts (bass, guitar, keyboards, programming)
Robbie Robertson (vocals, guitar, organ)
John “J.R.” Robinson (drums)
Duane VanPaulin (trombone)
Bill Ward (drums)
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Rebirth Brass Band (horns, percussion)
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background vocals:
David Baerwald – Code Blue – Rick Danko – Roy Galloway – Clydene Jackson – Mike Mills – Aaron Neville – Carmen Twillie – Yvonne Williams – Neil Young + Zion Harmonizers
Tracklist:
01. Night Parade (Robertson) 5.09
02. Hold Back The Dawn (Robertson) 5:25
03. Go Back To Your Woods (Robertson/Hornsby) 4.51
04. Soap Box Preacher (Robertson) 5.20
05. Day Of Reckoning (Burnin for You) (Robertson/Ricketts) 6.46
06. What About Now (Robertson/Neville) 5.11
07. Shake This Town (Robertson) 5.24
08. Breakin The Rules (Robertson) 5.51
09. Resurrection (Robertson) 5.21
10. Sign Of The Rainbow (Robertson, Martin Page) 5.27
More from Robbie Robertson in this blog:
Released almost exactly three years after the first, tremendously successful Crossroads DVD, this double-disc documents the 2007 benefit concert for Clapton’s Crossroads Center substance abuse facility. “Guitar” is the operative word here, since all the participants are six-string players. As in the last show, the genres include country (Willie Nelson, Vince Gill), gospel (Robert Randolph), Latin rock (Los Lobos), pop (Sheryl Crow, John Mayer), jazz fusion (John McLaughlin, Jeff Beck) and lots of blues (everyone else). Some performers such as Randolph, Mayer, B.B. King, Jimmie Vaughan, Robert Cray, Hubert Sumlin, Buddy Guy, and of course Clapton return from the 2004 lineup. That was a two-day event held in Dallas, TX. This was a one day — a very long day — show moved to the home of the blues, a stadium just outside of Chicago, and features a very funny Bill Murray introducing the acts.
Robbie Robertson is the solo debut album by Robbie Robertson, released in 1987. It won the Juno Award for “Album of the Year”, and producers Daniel Lanois and Robertson won the “Producer of the Year” Juno award, both in 1989 (there were no Juno Awards in 1988).
producer Daniel Lanois, who had previously worked with U2 and Peter Gabriel, two artists whose work obviously influenced Robertson’s musical thinking while he was making the album (they both appear on the album as well). As a result, Robbie Robertson is an album that represents both a clear break from his past, and an ambitious attempt to take his fascination with American culture and music in a new and contemporary direction. It’s highly ambitious stuff, and the album’s ambitions sometimes prove to be its Achilles’ heel. Robertson’s collaboration with U2, “Sweet Fire of Love,” sounds like a rather unremarkable outtake from The Joshua Tree, with the group’s aural bombast subsuming the ostensive leader of the session, while “Fallen Angel,” “American Roulette,” and “Somewhere Down the Crazy River” find Robertson exploring the same iconography of the Band’s best work, but without the same grace or subtle wit. And it doesn’t take long to realize why Robbie only took two lead vocals during his tenure with the Band; his dry, reedy voice isn’t bad, but it lacks the force and authority to communicate the big themes Robertson wants to bring across. Despite all this, Robbie Robertson does have its share of pearly moments, especially on the bitter “Hell’s Half Acre,” “Sonny Got Caught in the Moonlight,” and “Broken Arrow” (a performance more subtle and effective than Rod Stewart’s better-known cover). Robbie Robertson isn’t the masterpiece its creator was obviously striving towards, but it’s an intelligent and often compelling set from an inarguably important artist, and it comes a good bit closer to capturing what made the Band’s work so memorable than the latter-day efforts from Levon Helm and company. ( by Mark Deming)
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